Counterfactuals

Practicing The Difficult Cadenza

This series, using 3-D images and toys (Holmes stereo viewers, View Masters) from a bygone age, illustrates how our memories, planned futures, fantasies and desires compete for attention with the “real world.” An opera singer tries to practice in a room full of distractions and is blinded by the spotlight held by the viewer; in the accompanying photo, she is ultimately seduced, like a zombie, by a man in a fat suit summoning her to a refrigerator full of goodies. In another photograph, someone is goofing off instead of working, while he feels the presence of a shadowy spousal mommy-figure watching disapprovingly. In another, a man sitting on the diving board of a swimming pool blissfully enjoys the sun – while the background is a painted film set, and his wife awaits, cold, wearing a sweater.